


Planets of the Borderlands: an analysis

by QueerZubat



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Borderlands Universe, Essays, Outer Space, Planets, Scientific jargon, alien planets, fictional universe, space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28649646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerZubat/pseuds/QueerZubat
Summary: Or: I wanted to write some worldbuilding headcanons about the Borderlands universe but I ended up writing a sort of astrophysics essay (or rant) on a fictional universe.I reached the obscure awakened status of writing a sort of eSsAy about a fictional universe that I try to analyze and rationalize (yes, that's mad I know) and post it on AO3 and I don't know if this is a good thing or not.Probably not.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Planets of the Borderlands: an analysis

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, I tried to not use too much technical jargon in this thing but, y'know, just to be sure be aware that I may tend to use specific terms for all the things.  
> Also, I'm not entirely sure if it's understandable. Only Grammarly has beta-read this so... good luck?  
> The formatting is a bit crappy but I don't have energies to fix everything LOL

In this essay - that was meant to be a simple bullet-point list of headcanons for the planets to use in my fanfiction - I'll try to analyze the few information we have about the planets, moons and the likes of Borderlands' universe - hoping to not go on a whole rant for the inaccuracies and absurdities they put in the games - and try to do some world-building to have at least an idea of how everything works.

_Warning: it will be a long post and there are possibilities of me going off on a rant or info-dumping space stuff._

* * *

## PANDORA

First off, let me start posting here a couple of screenshots taken from Borderlands.fandom.com with the information on the planet that we got from the games.

Even though in BL1 Tannis says - roughly - that the duration of a Pandoran day is 90hrs and that the planet's revolution around its star is approximated around 10 years, I'm not sure where they got the data about the perihelion, aphelion and eccentricity of Pandora's orbit. Probably something else that Tannis said in BL1 that I missed? I'm not entirely sure.

Anyway, converting the kilometres of the aphelion and perihelion we get that Pandora's orbit is between 0.9AU and 1.19AU from its star.

Given that the star is said to be of the white subgiant type, I could say that with that given orbital distance, it's not plausible that a hypothetical habitable zone could be found there. Not around a white subgiant star, especially if we keep in mind that blue-white giants (or subgiants) are O-type stars that are known for their being massive and bright... _so bright that probably the 90% of the bright stars we see with the naked eye from Earth are O-type stars._ Due to their high mass, they are also short-lived stars that will soon expire as violent supernovae that could either end as a neutron star or as a black hole, depending on the initial mass. And since this kind of stars is short-lived, it's difficult that a planet could have enough time to reach the evolution stage to have life on it (even simply plants and animals), since it's supposed to be more plausible around stars that could have a lifespan of some billions of years.

_Now, I know that it's only a game and only a fanfiction, but my inner space addict cannot live without giving stuff at least a hint of plausibility._

So, to keep the idea of the very bright and hot white star but also giving some conditions for the plausibility of the existence of a habitable zone and to have enough life to let the planet naturally evolve lifeforms, I'd go for an A-type main-sequence star (real-life examples: Altair, Vega): it's a white star, usually, they are around 1.4 to 2.1 times the mass of our Sun and surface temperature around 7600K and 10,000K (the Sun is a G-type main-sequence star with a surface temperature around 5700K), and obviously way more luminous than our Sun.

Regarding the hypothetical habitable zone we could do quick and general reasoning: taking inspiration from Kepler-22b, whose star is slightly smaller than the Sun causing its habitable zone to be slightly closer in (or also the habitable zone around the red dwarf Gliese 581, to have another example); if we consider Pandora's star as an A-type star slightly bigger than the Sun we could easily guess that the habitable zone could be a bit farther than the one of our Stellar System.

Our system's habitable zone is estimated to be min 0.99 - 1.01AU and max 0.38 - 3AU (sometimes is stretched out to 10AU) from the Sun. From what I gathered from the Wikia, as I wrote earlier, Pandora's orbit is 0.9AU at the closest and 1.19AU at the farthest point of its orbit, and we could compare it to Earth's 0.98AU and 1.01AU distance. Keeping in mind that we have established that our star is bigger (we could use Altair as an example and go with almost 2 Solar masses), brighter and hotter than our Sun and that because of this the habitable zone has to be farther away, we can conclude that those measurements are a bit off. I'd go for around for a very minimum of 1.75AU for the inner boundary of the habitable zone and around 2.5 or 3 AU for the outer boundary of a habitable zone. _Or probably a bit more, since there are many factors that need to be kept in mind but one has to work with the few things they have, amirite?_

Returning to our dear Pandora, we could just throw away those measurements and consider its position near the inner boundary of the habitable zone we estimated. So, maybe around 1.80AU for the perihelion and 2.09AU for the aphelion to keep that 0.29 difference from the original data.

And now, time for the (in my humble opinion) _the biggest obstacle of the whole planetary crap_ : the **tidal lock**.

Although the tidal lock is a normal occurrence (our Moon could be considered an example), in Pandora's case I think it has been widely _messed up_. Even by the Trivia of Borderlands.fandom.com: " _this planet actually does not rotate itself (it is tidally locked)_ " this is **completely wrong**. The rotation occurs in any case, even with the tidal lock. Bringing up our Moon again, the Moon rotates on itself but the Moon's rotation has more or less the same duration of its revolving around the Earth, causing the always showing the same face to the planet. The same thing would occur for Pandora. If the planet is tidally locked, it would mean that Pandora's rotation period is of more or less 10 earth years like the revolution period around the star.

Usually, the tidal lock is an occurrence mostly seen on natural satellites towards their host planet than on planetary bodies. Planets reaching the tidal lock stage with the star they are orbiting is a natural occurrence, yes, but over a very long period of times and this explains why this occurrence of tidally locked planets is more common on planetary systems orbiting red or brown dwarf stars which have a way longer life-span than other main-sequence stars. If Pandora's star is a red dwarf and Pandora's orbit is closer to the star (and obviously also the habitable zone) then there's a possibility that over a long time the planet could have slowly changed its rotation duration reaching the tidally locked status. If you go on Wikipedia, the short article about hypothetical tidally locked planetary bodies called "[eyeball planet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeball_planet)" is quite interesting and also the artistic depiction of a "hot eyeball planet" makes me think how Pandora should look if everything was done right.

But, _again_ , there's a lot of confusion caused by the fact that the star should be a white one to be enough hot and bright to allow Elpis to function as a sort of "mirror" that reflects the star's light onto the "hidden" side of the tidally locked Pandora... that, again, with the basic things we have discussed up to now, it's difficult that Pandora could be a tidally locked planet.

I won't talk too long about "The Crackening" mentioned in the Wikia because that's another thing they got wrong. Yes, in some particular cases, the [tidal force](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_force) (not gravitational tearing, it's called tidal force) could cause the stretching of a body due to a gradient in the gravitational field from the other body, in some cases, there's also the formation of a ring system between bodies caused by the tidal forces but it's needed a particular condition called " _Roche limit_ "... otherwise we could have the spaghettification that we know that happens in extreme cases like when something is too close to the gravitational attraction of a black hole. BUT "The Crackening" happening on Elpis is caused by a completely different thing.

To quote the Borderlands 3 artbook " _its cracked, scarred surface is the result of past Dahl mining efforts as well as a more recent assault from Helios_ ". The cracking of Elpis' surface is not caused by the tidal forces of being tidally locked (yes, Elpis is tidally locked: quoting the artbook " _a tidally locked moon_ ") to a tidally locked planet that orbits absurdly too near to a star that couldn't even have a habitable zone.

It was caused by the heavy mining from Dahl. Heavy mining that with time caused a sort of destructive chain reaction (I don't know if it's connected to the Eridian Vault or simply to natural occurrences of mining dangerous material - the Wikia talks about great quantities of liquid methane - on a satellite that still had melted core under the surface) that lead the crust of the satellite to crack and split open. And Zarpedon ramming Helios' laser on Elpis' surface didn't help, _obviously_.

Let's return to Elpis reflecting light on Pandora.

First of all, the [albedo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo) is measured on a scale from 0 to 1 where 0 is a completely black body that absorbs all the incident radiation and 1 is a body that reflects all the incident radiation. So, to be correct, one would say an albedo of 0.999 and not 99.99%. But this is me being a bit picky and wanting to use the correct terms. To give some real-life examples of albedo: the Earth is around 0.36, the Moon's albedo is around 0.14. In our Solar System, the only objects with the highest albedo are Enceladus with an albedo of 0.99 and Eris with an albedo of 0.96.

Anyway, Elpis depicted as a bright reflecting thing is quite wrong. Taking into account the vast crack on the moon's surface, all the lava, the man-made structures and the likes, it's heavily difficult that Elpis could reach the 0.99 albedo needed to act as a small sun for Pandora. Enceladus is able to reach the 0.99 mark only because " _Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Consequently, its surface temperature at noon only reaches −198 °C (−324 °F), far colder than a light-absorbing body would be_ "... and let's not forget that Enceladus is a moon of Saturn and that Saturn is way more distant from the Sun than Earth. Or Pandora from its star. On Enceladus there are all the conditions needed to reach a high albedo, meanwhile I don't think that Elpis - that has snow and ice only on small parts of its surface from what we know - could have the conditions to reach the "requested" albedo. Eris is a dwarf planet, a trans-Neptunian object and again being a really lot distant from the Sun helps a lot in keeping the right conditions.

Anyway, if we give Elpis an albedo similar to the one of our Venus - that thanks to its thick atmosphere has an albedo around 0.7 - we could _probably_ have at least a similar effect that is pictured in Borderlands 1 and Borderlands 2 (NOT in Borderlands 3! Especially NOT in Borderlands 3 Endgame!), even tho I'm not entirely sure that the irradiance on Pandora's surface given by Elpis' reflection of the light could be enough to help sustain an environment that could allow life. But we also have life on Elpis (Kraggons, Rathyds, Shuggurats, Torks and whatever) so at this point, I don't know what to expect. It's a game so I guess anything could be possible and I don't know why I have this need to give rational explanations on a fictional universe, but here I am.

To conclude at least the part dedicated to Pandora and Elpis, the conditions we have from the in-game information are highly inaccurate and if not impossible, definitely highly improbable.

**Good options are** : A-type white star, maybe 2 times the solar masses, Pandora's orbit closer to the inner margin of the star habitable zone - to have the weather heavily impacted by the star's heat - not tidally locked meanwhile Elpis keeps being a close moon tidally locked to the planet and that its reflecting the star's light is the reason why the Pandoran days are 90hrs long; the other option is switching the white star for a red dwarf (or maybe also a K-type star, so an orange dwarf) smaller than our Sun, but then the orbit of Pandora - to keep the same conditions - would be way closer so the revolution would last less than the established 10 earth years (unless the speed of the revolutionary movement is slower than expected, but we'll end up having to do maths and I don't want to do maths), but the tidal lock would be an option and Pandora could be a "hot eyeball planet" with a side always burned by the ligh and the other side receiving the reflected light from Elpis. But I don't know if, with an orange or a red dwarf, the light reflected by Elpis would be enough. It could be a bit more plausible (probably) with a bright white star but with a K-type or an M-type dwarf, I think it's way more improbable.

~~The option of a white dwarf is the first one I trashed and you'll understand why when you'll reach Promethea's section.~~

I'd love to expand more on Pandora and Elpis fuck-ups but honestly, their absurdities make me have a stroke... or hope to get one.

* * *

## PROMETHEA

Let's start again looking at what our dear Wikia has to tell us about the planet.

Okay, so " _the sun never sets and appears fixed in the sky. There is an irregular day/night cycle as asteroids move across the sun throughout the day_ ". If one goes in-game to verify this affirmation, sadly it's true. I spent a lot of time perched on the ruins of Rhys' invisible ship staring at the Promethean sky to verify this. Also, if one uses the grid of a sniper rifle's crosshair, will see that the stars in the sky don't move at all while the asteroid belt moves. I also spent a lot of time climbing rocks on Skywell-27 to double-check and no, there is no movement of the stars in the sky... but on Skywell-27 the Promethea you see will appear fixed too and there's no expected movement from an asteroid that is orbiting around a planet. The only change of "horizon" on the planet is given by simply running around the asteroid and gaining a different angle of view. Nothing else.

Now, since we already established that it's not possible to not have a rotation movement on a planet (and that the creators didn't even take into account that the stars in the sky should appear like moving...you know, because of rotation and also because of the revolutionary orbit around the sun), we should analyze yet again how the things we see could work.

From what we could gather from both Promethea and Skywell, the star orbited by Promethea is a - yet again - white/blue star. I'd say that it could be again an A-type star, but if we keep in mind the note that says " _the sky is dim on Promethea and the stars can be seen at any time of day even in broad daylight_ " so we could hypothesise that the star could be, instead of an A-type, a stable [white dwarf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf).

It's speculated that even these cold dwarf stars could have a habitable zone, even though very close to them that would cause the planet to be tidally locked (as already stated, meaning that the rotation period and the revolution are in synchronicity and that the planet would end to have always a side exposed to the star), and since a white dwarf has a size that could be compared to the one of a planet, it's plausible that any kind of transit between the planet and the star would cause strong eclipses... enough to justify the " _irregular day/night cycle as asteroids move_ " thing we read in the Wikia. I guess.

Yeah, there are some other technicalities as in how a planet could be that close to the white dwarf: it could have been one of the planets that survived the original star expanding to its red giant phase and the consequent expulsion of the outer layers in a novae-like explosion, that then spiralled inwards, or it was an inward migration after the white dwarf was already formed... even tho this last option " _the planets would have to expel so much orbital energy as heat, through tidal interactions with the white dwarf, that they would likely end as uninhabitable embers_ ".

I'd speculate that the star that Promethea orbits could be a white dwarf, also because some "phenomena" we could observe either from the planet's surface and from the surface of Skywell.

At first, looking from the planet's surface, one could think that what we see it's something on the lines of an aurora or some similar atmospheric effect. But we can assist to that even from the asteroid belt that is way outside Promethea's atmosphere.

What we can see it's what we could speculate that it's a [planetary nebula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula): ionized gases that used to be part of the external layers that had been shed by the red giant when it reached the "breaking point" and exploded leaving behind the "core" aka the white dwarf.

A white dwarf has a faint luminosity caused by the stored thermal energy. At this stage of life, there's no fusion inside of the star so - because of the lack of energy source - the temperature and the light emitted will gradually get lower as the white dwarf loses the remaining energy. But this process is estimated to take a very, very long time, even more than the age of our universe (approximated to be 13.8 billions of years old).

Because of this aspect, we could easily understand why Promethean's sky would be always dim even during broad daylight: there is only so much light that a white dwarf could emit.

This makes me think if this could be "enough" to let us be able to see the stars in the sky from the surface of the planet. Most probably yes, but even with the high levels of light pollution of - for example - the Meridian Metroplex?

On Earth, light pollution - caused by artificial lighting of towns, cities, roads, billboards and whatever - has a big impact on how much we can see from the sky. If we are in an area with absent or very low light pollution we are able to see in the night sky the many stars of "our" arm of the Milky Way. In places where there's low light pollution, we can see at least the brightest stars. Where there's heavy light pollution is very difficult to see the stars in the sky.

In the past, Promethea was known to be an extremely harsh planet - even worse than Pandora - but now it's covered in big cities. To quote the artbook " _the Promethean landscape is typified by its buildings: a vast concrete jungle of hard surfaces and gridded lines_ ". And from what we get from the captions that follow the other Promethean concept arts and images, we could guess that on the planet the majority of the locations are now places similar to the Meridian Metroplex and nearby locations we can explore in-game.

The heavy use of any kind of artificial light could be justified by the not-enough-light from the star and also because of the irregular eclipses caused by the biggest asteroids... but all those lights combined by the low star lightning (even tho almost constant because of the tidal lock) could allow any way to see the stars even in broad daylight? To be honest, I'm not able to answer this question. I'm more of a space nerd, and not proficient enough about light pollution even if I know the bare basics because of my space-nerdiness...

Anyway, I'd also add that other than the light pollution, one should also keep in mind the atmosphere pollution ( _but we don't have enough data for that_ ) and also the weather conditions ( _and again, we see only sunny clear days/nights and no other weather condition_ ).

Before concluding, I need to add a small part dedicated to Skywell-27.

As I stated before, even though Skywell-27 is one of the asteroids that can be found in the belt that orbits around Pandora, once you're there you notice that all the whole rotation/orbit thing has been forgotten. Yeah, you can see some of the other asteroids "fluctuate" around you, but you never see anything move. Even if from the surface of Promethea you see the irregular movements of all the asteroids and their circling the planet, when you are up there nothing changes. The only change of scenery that you get is when you move from a side of the asteroid to the other. Otherwise, everything around you is static, but okay - I guess - we already understood that making celestial objects move is not a relevant thing in the game.

The other thing that makes me turn my nose is the fact that the good ol' Oz-kits were not introduced. We had them when we were on Elpis, but no Oz-kit ( _not even mentioned as a background detail without having to get them like in TPS_ ) to roam around an asteroid. Maybe an implicit thing? It could be possible for the Maliwan's forces because they are all geared up with suits and helmets, surely the ones on Skywell-27 and any other mining asteroid would have them already in their equip. But we also met the CoV on Skywell. With nothing that could make you think that they could be geared up for a spacewalk...like an Oz-kit. I'm not asking to reintroduce them completely but... having them at least mentioned? Or some item with the similar function mentioned and nothing else. That could have worked enough.

* * *

## EDEN-6

As it was used to be said in luna-parks " _another round, another race_ ". This time we aren't on a planet but a moon. To be specific, I'm going to talk for a bit of the sixth moon of the gas giant Eden... Eden-6.

Okay, so, firstly we have the absence of rotation yet again. _But by now we learnt that if we want to see the stars in the sky move we have to go back to TPS and chill on Elpis' surface to see something that makes you feel like you're on a realistic planet/moon with stars moving and that jazz._

In the sky, we see the gas giant Eden and one of the other moons that orbit the planet. We don't know how many there are but at least we know that are at least seven (Borderlands Wikia says that Vaugh in Tales mentions Eden-7, but sadly I don't have that game so I have no way to verify this), with Eden-6 being the moon where Jakobs set their headquarters and Eden-5 being Gaige's homeworld.

What do we know about Eden and its moons? Let's check the Wikia: " _According to Typhon DeLeon, the star system that Eden and its moons are located in has a reputation as "the paradise system", presumably due to its plentiful life-bearing worlds_ ". Also, we know that at least two of Eden's moons - Eden-5 and Eden-6 (probably also Eden-7?) - are populated. We don't know about the other moons and about other planets in Eden's system to formulate anything about that statement. Could be plausible that there could be more inhabited moons and planets in a star system, could be not. We know that many factors are needed to even only have a vague idea of what could be possible and what couldn't... and I'm here on a meat bicycle trying to keep up this circus of mine and make scientifical theories with sometimes almost to no data. 

Getting back to the topic, from what it's possible to see from the surface of the moon ( _sadly only the moon and the gas giant can be seen on the planet map for the fast travel_ ), Eden orbits what looks like and could probably be a yellow main-sequence G-type star like our Sun, or - if we keep in mind that Eden-6 atmosphere seems to have a greenish hue, sometimes almost yellowish - a star from the F-type to the K-type in the main sequence. I'd guess that it could be most probably a yellow-white F-type or a yellow G-type.

It's theorized that it's possible to have natural satellites with the right conditions and potential to have environments that could allow life on them [[1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_natural_satellites)]. Other than the "basics" conditions that should be met for [planetary habitability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_habitability), there are several other factors that could be added to have some uh- extra possibilities. I linked the articles on Wikipedia because I'm already writing this rant/essay and I already put enough jargon in this to write down the full list of all the conditions plus their explanation.

Anyway, we don't have enough data to go full "Mythbusters" on the Edens so I'll only have to headcanon that all the conditions needed are met and that the life on Eden's moons is plausible, as plausible could also be the lush and swampy rain forests typical of Eden-6.

* * *

## ATHENAS

We have no info on Athenas, other than the "two unidentified moons" mentioned in the Wikia and that probably the only inhabited areas are the ones where the Order of Impending Storm settled... that could also be probably were the first human settlements where if we keep in mind what Typhon DeLeon narrated.

* * *

## NEKROTAFEYO

Just call me Crazy Earl and leave me alone. I don't want to analyze this thing. Let's consider it alien crap and let's go on, my dudes. I just can't.

* * *

## GEHENNA

No info, except for some story of the planet (a bit more than what we have about Athenas) but nothing space-like to work with so I guess that I'll have to just assume and hope that all the basic conditions for planetary habitability are met and go on.

~~Even though, the Core thing sounds interesting...but it's not relevant right now. I'm talking about planets, not minerals.~~

* * *

## XYLOURGOS

I honestly like a lot the story of Xylourgos and makes me very curious about the powers of Gythian and wonder if the other Vault Monsters had something similar, I would be very interested into trying to learn more about them and what they could do other the stuff said and/or seen in the games, but they were just something to kill to get to the objective or save the world so I guess we'll never really know what they could do. I could probably try thinking about something, probably, but I'm digressing.

What do we know about Xylourgos? " _Xylourgos is an icy planet located in the farthest reaches of the galaxy, overshadowed by an eternal eclipse._ " So, almost nothing to work with...at least, in my humble opinion.

I think that the main reason for the perennial eclipse could be simply "aesthetics" because the planet is a sort of Lovecraftian-themed DLC for Borderlands 3. Has heavy "Mansions of Madness" vibes, with tentacles, eldritch monsters, cultists and curses.

If we want to try to give a sort of realistic reason, eh... I don't know if it could be simple enough. 

Probably Xylourgos could be a planet tidally locked to another white dwarf - something similar to the conditions we reasoned for Promethea - and could have a natural satellite tidally locked that is big enough to cause the eclipse. But still, the revolution of the moon around the planet can't create a status of an eternal eclipse. Maybe more frequent, but not eternal. So, or there's another planet tidally locked to the star that coincidentally has perfect timing to be always between Xylourgos and the star...or I don't know, honestly.

* * *

## CONCLUSION

What else I could say except that I may have lost like half my brain cells working on Pandora, Elpis and Promethea that I needed too much time to conclude this paper. As you were able to witness while reading this, towards the end I was too mentally tired to even discuss some things and honestly, at this point, I feel like I've reached an awakened status and having transformed into Tsoukalos from History Channel.

Because.

Planets.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to let me know if I missed something that could be added on here or if I didn't write clearly some stuff!  
> I'm not sure if I have linked every Wikipedia article needed to follow and understand the wild tripping of my brain while I was writing this... let me know if I need to link more.
> 
> You can find me ~~and insult me for this thing~~ on queerzubat.tumblr.com


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